Nightlife: A Novel

23

Except when he was desperate to get somewhere quickly, Calvin Dunn liked to travel by car. Today he was driving a new one, a customized coal black Lincoln Town Car. It had steel plates fitted into the door panels and a front end that had been reinforced with steel bars. The rear seat sat on a false floor so that he could carry a few extra pieces of equipment without subjecting them to public scrutiny.

The extra space permitted him more ways of administering rewards and punishments. At the moment it contained fifty thousand dollars in cash, eight pairs of plastic restraints, a set of night-vision goggles, three pistols, a short-barreled shotgun, and a 7.62-millimeter rifle with a four-power scope.

His customary attire included a black sport coat with thirty hundred-dollar bills zipped into an inner pocket and a ten-millimeter Smith & Wesson pistol in his shoulder holster.

He was in a good humor today. He was in the business of doing things nobody else would do, so usually his ego didn’t get much involved, but Hugo Poole had given him the sort of compliment that meant something to him: a great deal of money and the promise of more.

It was a pleasure for Calvin Dunn to work for a man like Hugo Poole. He didn’t have to explain the things that every adult male ought to know. Dunn had not needed to say, “You will pay what you owe me on time and in cash, or I’ll have to come take it and leave your body in the desert for the coyotes.” Hugo Poole had not needed to say, “If you rat me out, I’ll find you in prison and drive a sharpened toothbrush through your temple.” They both knew how business was done.

Hugo had given him the names the girl had used so far, and this morning Calvin Dunn had driven to the police station in the Kern County town of Paston, where he lived, and obtained a photocopy of the police circular. The circular had good photographs taken from driver’s licenses and her accurate height and weight. There was some confusion about eye color, but if he got close enough to see that, the job was as good as done.

Outside the police station he studied the printed information on the circular, then started his engine. He knew where to begin the hunt. He drove to Los Angeles County and found the address in the San Fernando Valley near Topanga where the girl had lived under the name Nancy Mills. He parked his car where he could easily see it from the windows at the front of the apartment building, then went inside and knocked on the door of the building manager’s apartment.

The man who opened the door had a short beard that looked like a permanent three-day growth. Calvin Dunn held up a small leather case with an identification card in it that had his picture in an official-looking format and an embossed gold badge under it that had no insignia and didn’t say he was anything in particular. But Calvin Dunn was tall and had muscular arms, so he looked like a cop.

“My name is Calvin Dunn, and you are—?”

“Rob Norris.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’d like to ask you a few questions about a tenant, the young lady who called herself Nancy Mills.”

Calvin Dunn’s stare transfixed the manager. Dunn’s pale gray eyes appeared to be focused on a point two inches deeper than the manager’s forehead, inside the manager’s skull. It was an uncomfortable feeling for him, and he felt an urge to close the door.

“Can I come in?”

The manager had no desire to let him in but no confidence in his power to stop him, so he said, “Okay.” He stepped back just in time to prevent Calvin Dunn from colliding with him. When Calvin Dunn arrived, violence was not a remote possibility but something already present in the room with him. The manager sensed that his task was to keep it from becoming overt.

The manager watched Dunn standing in his small living room, his hands clasped behind him as though to emphasize the difference it might make if they weren’t clasped, and rocking toe to heel on his shoes. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you some of the questions you already answered,” said Dunn.

“Okay.”

“Tell me about Nancy Mills. Why did she decide to live here? Did she know anybody here?”

“No. She just called up and said she liked living near the mall.”

“How did she pay for the rent? Did she have a credit card?”

“She gave me cash. It was a lot of money, when you add up first, last, and security deposit. Over three thousand bucks. I had to deliver it to the company that owns the place that day, because I didn’t want to keep that much around.”

“Just like that? Didn’t you do a background check to see if she was a problem tenant?”

“What do you mean?”

Dunn was patient. “A deadbeat, who skipped on her last landlord. Or a drug dealer, or a prostitute. That’s the kind of person who has lots of cash.”

“I don’t do that kind of checking. I think that the company does sometimes. On the application they ask for a lot of information. They want the last three addresses and phone numbers. They ask for references too, including an employer they can call.”

“Do you have her application here?”

“No,” said the manager. “The company gets it as soon as the place is rented.”

“I’d like you to see if you remember anything at all about her that might help me find her. Does she like to wear particular colors or a special style of clothes, for instance?”

“She has a nice little body, so she tends to wear pants and tops that are sort of snug. Not tight, exactly. Fitted. I never saw what she wore when she went out at night, but the picture from the hotel camera looked like the kind of thing I always saw on her. It was pants and a yellow top, and a matching yellow jacket thing over it, with something written on it.”

“You mean like a brand?”

“You know, there’s always some smart-ass thing written on it, like to tease you. Maybe the brand is mentioned, maybe not.”

“Oh. Any friends, anybody she talked to a lot?”

“I don’t think so. I guess she must have talked to Mary Tilson, the woman across the hall from her.”

“Nobody else? No guys?”

“None that I ever saw. If you’re an apartment manager, you have to kind of watch for that too. You get a sweet-faced little babe into an apartment, and then all of a sudden there’s a boyfriend living there and his drinking buddies are in and out all the time, making noise and pissing off the other tenants.”

“What did she do all day? Did she work?”

“I don’t know. She used to go out for a run in the morning, then come back. After that, I guess she would go for the day. Now and then she’d come home with bags from stores.”

“Interesting. I’d like it if you’d let me into her place now, so I can have a look around.”

“I’m not really supposed to do that. The police won’t let me rent it out or anything yet.”

Dunn said quietly, “If you help me, I’ll pay for your cooperation. If you don’t, I’ll still get what I want, but you won’t.”

The manager noticed again the strange way that Calvin Dunn looked at him, his eyes appearing to focus on a point inside the manager’s forehead. “All right.”

They went to the apartment, and Dunn waited while the manager unlocked the door, then ducked under the yellow police tape across the doorway and into the room. Dunn looked at everything closely, and sighted along the woodwork where the police had dusted for prints. There didn’t seem to be any spots where they had put tape down and lifted a print. Then he examined the furnishings. “Did she pick out this stuff, or did it come with the place?”

“It’s furnished. The company buys it in lots, I think. It all looks the same. They have a lot of other buildings.”

Calvin Dunn spent a few more minutes looking for anything that Nancy Mills might have left, carefully opening and closing cabinets and drawers with the edge of his hand, but looking only experimentally, to be sure the police had already searched. Then he said, “Let’s go back to your place.”

When they were in the manager’s apartment again, Calvin Dunn reached into his inner coat pocket and handed the manager three hundred-dollar bills. “This is for your cooperation.”

“Thank you,” said the manager.

“You’re welcome. Now get me the application.”

“I already told you—”

Calvin Dunn held up his hand to interrupt. “I want you to think about it. You just saw that I’m a truthful man. No harm came to the apartment and you got a reward. Look at me. Do you want me to be your friend, or do you want me to be your enemy?”

The manager said, “I can’t give you that.”

Dunn lunged forward, his right arm across the manager’s chest, and flipped him backward over his hip so that he landed facedown on the floor. Dunn held the manager’s wrist with both hands and placed his foot against the manager’s back. “You keep a copy of the application. Where is it?”

Norris gasped. “In the desk. Over there.”

“Thank you,” said Calvin Dunn. He released the manager, walked to the desk, pulled open the deep file drawer, and found the applications filed alphabetically. He took the photocopy of the one that Nancy Mills had filled out, and examined it closely. Then he set it on the desk. “That will do it for me. Don’t worry, your arm will be okay in a day or two.” He stepped to the door. “You look too smart to say anything to anybody about my visit. Are you?”

The manager looked up from the floor. “Yes.” And then Calvin Dunn was out the door and gone.